Hello everyone,
I hope you’re all doing well and you’ve had a great week.
As promised, I’ve managed to find some time to give you all an update on Against All Odds. Today’s post will be focused on articulating the expected launch features, what will be coming later and giving a general tour around the game.
The Three Pillars of AAO
From the inception of Slaughter League (and eventually AAO) I always wanted to deliver a three core features:
- Multiplayer – as I’d never made a multiplayer game before, this project was initially started to essentially be a teaching moment for myself. As I’d had some success with 2D platformers in the past, it seemed like a no-brainer to pair these two ingredients together. It was exciting to see how far I could take it.
- Creative – being a huge fan of the Halo series I’ve always admired how dedicated those games are to community features, and without them present in games such as Halo 3 and Reach I’m not sure I’d even be developing games to this day. I’ve always tried to add creative tools to almost all my games, but often as an afterthought, and always lacking in the ability to share content and be intuitive. I wanted this game to have it all.
- Solo – the goal for this mode would be to build from my existing single-player games and create an experience on a new level. AAO being my first 3D title too, I wanted to focus on developing a more immersive setting (as opposed to just stickmen and floating platforms).
This was a bit naïve to say the least. To not only attempt to learn how to build a networked game, that can also support custom content, while getting used to the new workflow of 3D games, and to have meaningful progression and customization, with a well-paced structured single-player experience – all with a team less than a handful at any given time, is a bit crazy.
The reason I’m talking about this is because I wanted to preface you all and give context to the harsh reality of over-scoping. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to deliver the single-player experience at launch, but, the three pillars are not shifting, at all. Technically we could throw together a single-player A-Z with stages from the multiplayer and call it a day but that won’t satisfy my goal.
For this reason, AAO will launch with Multiplayer and Creative day one but the expanded, full-fat Solo mode, featuring global leaderboards, story, voice acting, cutscenes etc. will be coming later (likely as DLC). Those not interested in Multiplayer at all can still play Race stages in Custom Games alone. And as proof the mode is only being temporarily delayed, here is our new main menu, with all three-pillars still front and center.
Cross-Play
I’m super excited to announce that cross-play will be available on day one.
Additionally, the multiplayer will also feature a squad system for linking up and matchmaking with friends together. Squads are a maximum of 4 players.
Inviting members to your squad can be done either via platform friends or explicitly using their Username#Tag for cross-platform invites. We do intend to launch to new platforms as the game grows in the future and will ensure all platforms can play with any platform!
Currently there is no way to add friends within the game’s ecosystem, but this is definitely a stretch goal we aim to add in future.
Customization Improvements
Since our alpha last year we’ve added a ton of new customization options including hundreds of unique items, emotes and of course, victory animations.
Emotes are separated into two kinds: Quick and Animated. Quick Emotes can be used at any time during gameplay (even when dead) and simply leave a quick sprite-based emote at your location. See something hilarious or frustrating? Express it! Animated Emotes can only be used when stationary and are more like traditional emotes in other titles (expect dance moves, taunts etc.) Here’s an example of Quick emoting on our new race stage Ice Rink.
Additionally, players can also now create up to 8 customization presets for your character’s look. Presets only include skin colour, fatness, femininity, voice, and outfit choices. Titles, emotes and victory animations are fully independent.
Localization
I think it’s fair to say my level designs have never really been that accessible, and what fun would they be if they were. So, another exciting feature coming to AAO at launch, to help the game itself be as accessible as possible, is full localization for many different languages. Everywhere from the announcers’ subtitles, to object descriptions in Creative has been localized. Some very deep areas in Creative such as the Object Inspector and Script Editor will not be localized day one as they currently rely on specific strings to function/organise themselves (which localizing would break) but everywhere else is accounted for! At launch we will support: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian, Korean, Russian, Japanese and Chinese (Simplified)!
Achievements
AAO will now feature platform-based Achievements at launch. We have a total of 35 achievements ready spanning across all areas of the game from matchmaking, custom games, creative, shops and progression! Take a look at the unlocked versions of the icons:
That’s all I have time to discuss today. I hope this post can be viewed as a huge win for the game’s launch content overall, despite the unfortunate news of a delayed single-player. On the next update I would like to show off some of the new stages, the new combat system and hopefully some more news on the game modes expected for launch.
Thanks all, have a nice weekend!
